The Duty to Disobey Unlawful Orders Was America’s Idea

“Stauffenberg pointed the way: if your obedience requires you to do criminal, unhuman things, you are no longer bound by your oath. A soldier’s final benchmark must always, in the last instance, be his conscience, not his orders.” That’s what Jan Techau, a friend of mine with a special vantage on this matter (more about Stauffenberg in a minute), told me when I asked him what he thought about a controversy now raging in the United States.

It’s about six members of Congress who used to serve in the military or the CIA, and who made a video in which they remind active service members that “our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.”